Tao Te Ching 35 (Teaching 2)

Music or the smell of good cooking may make people stop and enjoy. But words that point to the Tao seem monotonous and without flavor.

When you look for it, there is nothing to see. When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear. When you use it, it is inexhaustible.
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Learning to enjoy the mundane things in life – those things that seem monotonous and without flavor – is essential to happiness, because most of life, ours and everyone else’s, is found in the mundane.

Synonyms for mundane include ordinary, routine, everyday, commonplace. Those words pretty much describe life. If our happiness is dependent on a steady rush of the extraordinary, the unusual, the occasional and the exceptional, then we’re going to come up a short of the mark.

We can see and hear the mundane, but we don’t, because we believe there’s nothing to see or hear. We’re wrong. It’s there, waiting for our awareness and our attention. Try it; look at it; listen to it; smell it; taste it; touch it; think about it.

Life is filled with the mundane – it’s everywhere and in everything; it’s the “stuff” of life. And, the best thing about the mundane – it’s inexhaustible. We can use it every moment of the day without concern for using it up.

Enjoy it.